Cereal = Sleep

Since Robert Alan was about 6-8 weeks old, my mother-in-law has been telling me that he probably needed to be eating rice cereal because he was such a big boy and he probably needed some more food. I knew that I wasn't supposed to give him anything but my milk before he was 4 months old because studies have shown that if babies are given "food" before they're 4 months old, they have a better chance of having food allergies. Actually, truth be told, I didn't just know that--our pediatrician told me. Well, Robert Alan hadn't slept in over a week, waking up every 2-3 hours to eat and then wanting to play for 40 minutes after eating. It was awful. I was still having to get up every morning to go to work, so being on my game after 4 hours of sleep a night was getting super hard. We couldn't decide if he was teething or growing, but I knew something had to be done for my sanity. I couldn't go another week without sleep. SO, I texted our lovely pediatrician and asked her what to do. Tylenol? Orajel? Cereal? She told me ex-nay on the orajel-ay (hmm....that's a tough one in pig-latinese), but I could hit him up with some cereal and some Tylenol. Woo-hoo!! So, we fed Robert Alan rice cereal for the first time on Tuesday night this week...

Did somebody say food?! What have you put me in?

Those hands are lookin' pretty good...

Hmmm....I'm not sure about this, Mom.

Whoa! Now THAT'S some real food!

He did a pretty good job eating. I've said all along that the kid loves to eat. We didn't get too messy or anything. He only ate a few bites and then started getting fussy, so David and I decided that we'd call it quits for that episode because we want him to have a good attitude towards eating, not fear the high chair. I'm pretty sure that after he ate and nursed, he spit up everything he had in his stomach. Ugh. He ended up waking up twice later that night. That wasn't good enough for me, so on Wednesday, we fed him, then gave him a warm bath, and then nursed him. He woke up one time later that night. "Progress!" I thought. Thursday night I decided to give him a full tablespoon of rice cereal to see if it would hold him over longer (I had been giving him just two baby spoons full). He ate all of it, took a warm bath, nursed, played a bit, and then went to bed. He slept 10 hours and didn't wake up at all during the night! Woo-hoo!!!!!!! You should have seen me at work the next day. I had so much energy. I had forgotten what it felt like to have a whole night's rest. A-MAZ-ING! So, we've learned that our nighttime routine will now be rice cereal, bath, nurse, play a bit, nurse again if necessary, read a book, go to bed. We'll see how long this lasts. I'm proud, though, of my little boy. He's eating like a champ.